Providing Renewable Clean Energy

Challenge and Problem

Balancing humankind’s need for energy with the environmental cost to our planet is a major challenge. Demand for energy is forecasted as increasing 50% by the year 2025 with most of these being fossil fuels. Currently over 1.6 billion humans have no access to electricity and 2.4 billion rely on plant material, vegetation, or agricultural waste as an energy and heating source. Our fossil fuel consumption is escalating and could double.

Meanwhile, Earth’s glaciers are receding, the CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have nearly doubled, and world temperatures, recorded since 1861, were the hottest in three of the past five years. 1998 was the warmest of record, 2001 came in the second warmest and 2004 was the fourth warmest.

Nanotechnology Solutions

Nanotechnology will help fill our need for energy solutions through more efficient lighting, fuel cells, hydrogen storage, solar cells, locally distributed power generation, and decentralized generation and storage by reinventing the power grid.